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Acknowledgments - More than fifteen years ago, I counselled a man who was unsure of himself and was then earning $125 a week. Now president of the nationally known company he joined then, he recently employed a new client of mine as his assistant—at $22,000.00 yearly. These men, and many thousands of men and women like them, made this book possible.

Prologue - If you really want to make a habit of success, stop trying to learn from your mistakes. That's the first step!

People do not learn from their mistakes. I have learned that from my research and consultations with over 40,000 men and women over a period of more than twenty years. I have learned, also, that each person has his own way to success and his own kind of success. Your path to greater progress will not be exactly the same as that used by anyone else, even though the principles of achieving success are the same. This book is about the principles, and the Success Factor Analysis techniques based on them.

01. Success Life - There certainly seems to be a lot to what Alice says in the prologue. Just the same, you were told to learn from your mistakes when you were a child, weren't you? I was. All of us were.

And we were not told to study the right things we did, our achievements and successes. To do that would have been immodest, we were told.

02. Lid On Success - Recently I was asked to demonstrate and discuss Success Factor Analysis (the techniques presented in these pages) at the American Management Association—before a group of executives representing corporations throughout the country. They gave me the topic: "How to discover your capacity." I believe in man's unlimited potential, so I accepted the invitation as an opportunity to attack a long-established myth.

03. Own Gold - During the uninhibited days of the California gold rush, the only rule was that the gold was where you found it. The very term, "striking it rich," was indicative of the large part luck played in one's success. Of two men working the same creek within feet of each other, one could emerge a rich man and the other a pauper though both were applying the same amount of energy and talent to the job. And just to keep things interesting, lucky men are still finding gold in sizable amounts entirely by accident.

04. Some Clues - When tradition says you can't keep a good man down, it is referring to a man who knows he is good, has confidence in his abilities, and has the courage to rise again. To that extent tradition and I are in agreement, but after that the break is sharp. There is something painful to me in visualizing a good man constantly climbing up after one defeat on top of another. I can admire his fortitude, but must deplore his career planning.

05. Chart Success - "Never take counsel of your fears," said Stonewall Jackson.

"Attitudes are more important than facts," said Dr. Karl Menninger.

"Act as though it were impossible to fail," said Dorothea Brande.

I agree with all three of those powerful personalities. But how much better if Jackson had suggested some constructive forms of counsel, if Dr.

06. Daily Success - How would you like to manufacture "a success?" How would you like to have a "success reservoir" into which you could dip whenever you feel low in spirit or have the "blues?" Just follow the instructions, and you'll manufacture "a success," and build your own "success reservoir."

07. Dangerous Fallacies - "Stay out of company politics," the ambitious newcomer is warned, "or you'll get your throat cut before you know where you are."

It is an old warning with a lot of tradition to support it. The fact that tradition supports it, however, should be enough to make it suspect. Company politics has seen its evil days, and some organizations are still torn with it, but by and large the day when close-knit groups resented each other in general and all ambitious newcomers in particular is drawing to a close.

08. Success Thinking - I know a man who was preparing to change jobs. He expected the new position to bring him an increase of forty per cent, from $5,200, to $7,200 yearly. His plan was made, his program worked out, and his first steps taken. To put himself in the right frame of mind, he took his wife out and "had a ball." He bought her a "silly" hat she admired, bought himself a fancy tie he wanted, then they went out to dinner and dancing.

09. Get The Job - Dr. Norman Vincent Peale likes to tell the story of the old gentleman whose greatest claim to fame was the arrival of his hundredth birthday. At the party celebrating his accomplishment, a reporter lured the centenarian into conversation with, "You must have seen a great many changes in your lifetime?"

10. Write A Resume - One of the most cherished rituals of employment is the mind-wrenching ceremony called "filling out the application blank." All over the country, in bank after bank of steel files, are millions upon millions of completed application blanks, all looking much alike, and all containing much the same useless information. Of the labors that went into filling them out, of the hopes and ambitions, of the personalities and real achievements of the applicants, only a few hints are revealed. Said one employer of his application file, "The Agony Box.

11. Raise + Promotion - Within the last 50 years a man's productivity, and hence earning power, has increased so enormously that salary raises are handed out with what seems to be automatic regularity for a variety of reasons. Of course labor and management see nothing automatic about the process, leaders of the former trying to "better conditions for the workingman" and leaders of the latter trying to "hold the price line to stop inflation."

12. Your Birthright - Every historical fact confirms the creativeness of man and glorifies his efforts to improve himself, often against pathetic odds. Both in the Old and New Testaments are many references to the joys of work. Socrates said, "He is idle who might be better employed." Lowell said, "No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him." And by way of bringing these and countless supporting sayings up to date, Dale Carnegie said, "If you don't find happiness in your work, you may never find it anywhere."

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